"British oil giant BP plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to require that businesses prove the Gulf of Mexico oil spill caused them financial losses before they can collect money from a multibillion-dollar settlement of private claims resulting from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The class-action settlement, preliminarily approved by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in May 2012, sought to avoid piecemeal litigation by resolving hundreds of thousands of claims for economic damages from what is generally considered the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Six months later, BP and the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee, the group of lawyers who reached the deal, jointly heaped praise on the settlement during a fairness hearing, urging Barbier to approve it."